A Bay of Hope

Syd Barrett flat.

To all our sistren and brethren, hail! Might you wonder if
the Church is dead the answer is clear and simple: no! The Church is
contemplating its path and went into an early hibernation to, as the
French say, reculer pour mieux sauter.

One of the main occupations of any holy man is to study the scriptures
and that is what we have been doing so far. The next post is very
academic and thus, by definition, boring, although it starts rather
user-friendly.

Last week a professional rock memorabilia seller put some pictures for
sale that he described as:

SYD BARRETT FOUNDING MEMBER OF PINK FLOYD

4 X ORIGINAL MICK ROCK PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN AND PRINTED IN 1974 SHOWING SYD
IN HIS FLAT WITH PAINTED BOARDS,EARLY MICK ROCK PHOTOS ARE NEAR
IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND AND NOW HE PRINTS PHOTOS AT 1000 POUNDS PER PHOTO.THESE
ARE ORIGINAL 6 X 4 INCHES PRINTED BEFORE MICK ROCK BECAME FAMOUS, LONG
AFTER SYD WHO WAS ALREADY FAMOUS.

The 4 prints show Syd Barrett in his apartment and date from The Madcap
Laughs photo sessions where both Mick Rock and Storm Thorgerson showed
up.

The Church has created some controversy concerning the date of the photo
shoot. It has been published in most biographies that the pictures were
taken in the autumn
of 1969, but JenS,
who was a Cantabrigian friend of Syd Barrett and knew Ig as well,
pointed out that the pictures were probably taken in spring. The Church
further narrowed the date of the photo shoot to the week between
the 14th and the 21st of April 1969, and certainly not
1974 as the seller wrote.

The account of the photo shoot also differs from the point of view of
who is telling the story. Storm Thorgerson claims that he shot the
sleeve of The Madcap Laughs, but - in the past - Mick Rock hinted that
he was behind it all.

An unconfirmed story goes that Mick Rock was taking pictures on behalf
of Hipgnosis and gave (some of) his film rolls to Storm Thorgerson who
developed and used some of the pictures for The Madcap Laughs record
sleeve.

It takes a rascal to recognise another one. Mick Rock kept some
negatives in his back pocket and forgot these until he could show
off with his own little private project called Psychedelic Renegades.
(In retrospect this wasn’t a bad thing as Storm Thorgerson has
apparently lost
all the negatives he had in his possession.)

When, a couple of years ago, probably at The
Other Room exhibition, a fan asked Mick Rock to autograph the sleeve
picture of The Madcap Laughs he mysteriously grinned and said something
like ‘I can’t sign pictures that weren’t taken by me, can I?’ and it
still isn’t sure if his comment was ironic or not.

The Church looks at its flock in awe and admiration, which is in shrill
contrast with those other religions that take their believers for total
nincompoops, and the Reverend will let you decide for yourself after
only a tiny amount of brainwashing.

On the Madcap Laughs shooting day several photo series were made. The
series of Mick Rock may have taken two consecutive days instead of one,
but nobody, not even Rock himself, remembers it very well.

THE MICK ROCK COLLECTION

Outside pictures (B&W)

¤ Syd on and around his car, sometimes with Iggy.¤ Syd & Iggy
on the pavement.¤ Syd with guitar case and guitar.

These black and white pictures show Syd and Iggy in front of the house.
Syd is sitting on, standing next, leaning against the car, claimed by
Mick Rock to be a pink Pontiac, while it was naturalmente blue.
On some pictures Syd wears a necklace, on others apparently not. Some
cut-outs of these pictures can be found in our Street
Life gallery.

Inside pictures (colour)

¤ Syd with (naked) Iggy.

Syd wears a brown jacket, a yellow shirt, and reddish trousers. These
are about the same clothes as on the outside session (the shirt may be
different). Some cut-outs of these pictures can be found in our gallery: Bare
Flat.

¤ Syd without Iggy.

Syd with blue tie-dyed t-shirt, red trousers, necklace and daffodils. No
shoes. Other pictures have him sitting on the mattress, drinking coffee.

¤ Syd kneeling shirtless on the floor.¤ Syd and his record
player.

Barrett is shirtless, wears his red trousers, has the necklace (at least
in one picture). Should you care to know, the record player in his room
is a Garrard
SP25 MK2 (thanks mrlimbo!) and the record on the player is from the
soul label Direction, a subsidiary of CBS (thanks infantair!).
(Information grabbed from Late
Night.).

A few of these pictures appear on the inner sleeve of the double album
Syd Barrett, but none have been directly credited to Mick Rock (the
credits go to Blackhill, Lupus, SKR and Hipgnosis).

Update 27 December 2012: It took some time but Göran Nyström
(from Men
On The Border) and Giulio Bonfissuto have found enough evidence to
conclude that the record on Syd's turntable is Taj Mahal's The
Natch'l Blues. They did this by comparing the tracks that are
visible on Mick Rock's pictures with the track listing of the record: "4
rather equally short tracks first and then one that is longer. This
should be the album". (Source: Göran Nyström at Laughing
Madcaps [dead link]. Other source at Late Night forum: Syds
Record Player!)

Inside pictures (B&W)

¤ Syd with record player and trimphone.¤ Syd sitting on
mattress.

Syd is wearing a tie or a scarf, a tie-dyed t-shirt and a different pair
of trousers (dark with rows of lighter spots). A newspaper and a trimphone
are lying next to the mattress. The record player has got a different
record (the one with the Direction label is lying (unprotected)
underneath another one). There is no sign of Iggy in this series.

¤ Iggy nude study.

The (in)famous series of Ig. No sign of Syd here. This series can be
found in our gallery: Rock
Bottom.

(The Lost
in the Woods home movie, probably made by Mick Rock, has Syd walking
around in a yellow shirt and blue jacket and trousers. For completists:
the yellow shirt is not the same as the one he is wearing on some of the
pictures mentioned above.)

Syd Barrett compilation.

THE HIPGNOSIS COLLECTION

The only way to consult the Hipgnosis archives is to wade through record
sleeves and the books from Storm Thorgerson, as most of the negatives
have been misplaced through the years.

The best overview of Storm’s pictures on that day can be found on the inner
sleeve of the compilation album Syd Barrett that appeared in 1974.
Thorgerson has the following to say about its cover: "I made up the
design from photos already taken at The Madcap Laughs session and added
special insignia."

Outside pictures (colour)

¤ Syd leaning against car (with guitar case).¤ Syd sitting on
car.

Storm Thorgerson took a few colour pictures during the outside sessions. One
of these pictures was used for the cover of A Nice Pair (Pink Floyd
compilation album, that has had different editions with slightly
different covers). Another picture can be found on the following Church
page: When
Syd met Iggy...Update 2001 02 19: Iggy has confirmed to
the Church that she took the Polaroid picture of Syd Barrett sitting
next to the car: Give
birth to a smile...

Inside (B&W)

¤ The yoga session.

Syd sitting shirtless and shoeless on the floor and showing his
gymnastic skills. Update October 2010: the Church is now of the
opinion that the yoga pictures may have been the 'real' autumn Madcap
Laughs cover shoot, commissioned by Harvest director Malcolm Jones, when
the album was in its final stages: The
Case of the Painted Floorboards

Inside (colour)

Until now we only knew the pictures that were used for The Madcap Laughs
and for the Crazy Diamond CD compilation.

¤ The Madcap Laughs front.

Syd, shoeless, in blue shirt and pink trousers crouching (daffodils in
front of him). A bigger version of this photograph can be found on Crazy
Diamond. (See also: Stormy
Pictures.)

¤ The Madcap Laughs back.

Syd with yellow shirt and necklace (in red trousers) with Ig leaning
artistically on the chair. A bigger version of this photograph can be
found on Crazy
Diamond (Syd Barrett CD box, 1993).

¤ Syd in brown jacket, sitting on the floor. Ig walking towards the
chimney.¤ Syd with a toy aeroplane (and daffodils) in front of him.

This last picture
can also be found on A Nice Pair, but not on the edition that has the
Syd Barrett car picture (several version of the Nice Pair sleeve do
exist, as you have figured out by now).

According to the above information the four pictures that were sold on
eBay belong to the Hipgnosis collection and not to Mick Rock.

1. Picture one is the famous Madcap Laughs front-sleeve but in its
entirety.2. The second picture, with Syd and a toy aeroplane, has
also been published before, but this version is not cropped and shows
more of the surrounding room.3 & 4. Pictures 3 and 4 have been
unknown until now and have never been published before.

The four pictures were sold for a mere 127.00 £. The Church duly hopes
that the buyer is an authentic fan who will share hi-res scans with the
Barrett community.

Syd Barrett's Pontiac.

The seller of the pictures has previously sold one other Syd Barrett
photo from the same session. It was un unknown picture of Syd sitting on
his Pontiac, taking away, once and for all, the rumours that his car was
bright pink. The Reverend wonders if claytonpriory still has
other pictures to sell, perhaps with Ig on the background, although it
is of course regrettable that the collection is divided and sold in
separate pieces.

Did this post confuse you?

It confused the Reverend as well, especially when he found out that one
picture, entitled to Mick Rock, actually needs to be credited to
Hipgnosis. Or is it the other way round? That will be discussed in a
later post: A
Bay of Hope (update).

Until then, my brethren and sistren, live long and prosper
and don’t do anything what Ig wouldn’t have done.